Get Thee to Thy Gym

As someone that brings home a below average income, I really understand how trying to get in shape can siphon savings from your bank account. Of course being active doesn’t have to be expensive eg. walk/jog/run outdoors, use your surroundings to your advantage like steps, hills, park benches etc. Plus healthy foods (ie whole grains, fresh fruit and veges) are really cheaper that processed packaged foods. Yes, yes, yes, we’ve all been told before. Well if I know all this then why am I complaining my struggle for weight loss is emptying my wallet? Here’s why:

1. Am I supposed to exercise for free outdoors in the freezing winter or when it’s raining?
2. Paying for a gym membership guilts you into exercising when you’re about to give up, so you’re not wasting all that mullah.
3. If you get as bored and restless as quickly as I do then appeal of walking/jogging around the block for the hundredth time is equivalent to grating my face off.
4. Apartment does not permit for pets, hence no furry creature to take for walks.
5. Way too embarrassed (and apartment way too small) to be bouncing around indoors in front of TDH while Denise Austin is kicking it in my DVD player.
   

So for all these reasons I have chosen to forgo a few luxuries so I can afford the flexibility and variety provided by the gym.

There is one more point I would like to make. Being slightly financially challenged I thought I would be the last person on Earth to pay for Personal Training. Well after my three initial free PT sessions setup through my new gym membership, I impulsively decided to buy twelve more sessions upfront for six hundred smackeroos. Honestly it’s not something I know I can really afford but I will make some cut backs, like never paying for coffee again, all lunches will be prepared at home and charging my boyfriend for hugs… and more. However my first three training sessions tell me this experience will be well worth the money. Here’s why, in another list I prepared earlier:

1. I know I wont weasel my way out of going, I’ve made a commitment to my trainer and I feel obliged to fulfill my appointments and not waste his time.
2. He pushes me so much more than I could myself and I can feel my body reaping the benefits, my muscles are still sore for days after one workout.
3. I can do cardio till the cows come home, but I despise weight training (especially upper body), even though I know how important it is for maintaining weight loss. So completing mostly weight conditioning with my trainer means I don’t have to so much in my own workouts.
4. Also ‘cause my trainer pushes me so hard, when I come home I am as high as a kite on endorphins.

Now I know I can’t afford this forever but twelve weeks to help kick my butt into action and maybe gain a few good tips and routines is definitely worth it. Maybe I’ll try out his group (and less expensive) training sessions when my twelve weeks is up.

Personal Training is not for everyone, but this is a short term process to aid in reaching my long term goals.

Diet Queen

Motivation. Now sold is gel and spray varieties.

If you’re anything like me then I bet you put everything off until ‘tomorrow’, including going to the gym and actually cooking and eating all those veges you bought in some uncharacteristically healthy state of consciousness.

If only an unrelenting motivation to eat healthily and work-out could be acquired through say a monthly injection, maybe an inhaler or possibly a topical gel. Sadly there is no such method to get motivated (Prozac I hear you say….) it’s really up to the individual wanting it enough or the individual enviously gazing at enough half-naked images of Miranda Kerr. But don’t fret, for I have found a surefire way guaranteed to get you to drop that bag of Doritos and make a beeline to your nearest spin class.

I was recently shopping at Myer and decided to try on a lovely Country Road ensemble. When I entered the dressing room, I thought I had mistakenly walked into a House of Mirrors at a poorly located fair. In one corner of the room four mirrors were connected to form half an octagon, and opposite that reflective hell was another single mirror.

Let me tell you, there was no neck straining to see what my arse really looks like in that clingy skirt. Last’s nights dinner was on display in all it’s glory under fluorescent lighting right there smack bang on my hips. Never before have I been quite so horrified by my own reflection.

Needless to say I bolted from said dressing room and was sweating it out on a treadmill that very afternoon.

So if you don’t quite have the drive to get off your butt and make the most of that pricey gym membership then may I suggest you make a short trip to your nearest department store and step into The Little Dressing Room of Horrors.

Diet Queen